


Lurien

by Liliet



Category: Log Horizon
Genre: Gen, i am not planning on using any canon characters other than in background, this is just a shameless setting exploittation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8839372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liliet/pseuds/Liliet
Summary: a story about a player (im sorry im dead)





	

**Author's Note:**

> chapters still dont exist but this SHOULD be the end of the first one. the next part will probably be posted as a new one. new stuff from after "Good thing it caught up with her now"

Lurien fell on her knees.

There was definitely earth under them, and grass, wet and soft. If she didn't get up now, there would be very visible spots on her pants, she knew that from her limited but beloved camping experience.

She did not get up.

There was sunlight filtering through the crown of an enormous tree, and leaves dancing through the air, and birds chirping in its branches. Sunbeams danced on the thick greenery covering half-destroyed ancient buildings in the way Lurien had only been able to imagine until now - her old PC couldn't handle high graphic settings, and so she prioritized getting around in combat well. Imagination could always fill in the missing details.

Her imagination, as she was now discovering, was quite inferior to the real thing.

For example, one part it was missing was the pants-shitting terror.

Well, okay, Lurien didn't REALLY shit her pants. She wasn't even sure if this body was capable of those functions... hopefully not. Being stuck in a fantasy world away from home, and still having to poop? Talk about a raw deal.

The girl's head was slowly stopping spinning, and with it back came the sense of humor and curiosity, pushing away the fear for now. She could think about the implications of what the SHIT just happened later, and now - well, this was kind of a thing she'd dreamt of happening. She always knew it was stupid, and that if she were to really get into an MMORPG-like fantasy world she'd be weak and useless and die really fast... but some things are just persistent.

Thankfully, Akihabara was a safe zone. Or, uh, was supposed to be a safe zone? In the game it was, but whatever this was, if it were a game, it sure was a very shitty one. Of the kind of prank Luriel hated from the depth of her soul. Being made to question your perception of reality is not fun, not when you have trouble with that in everyday life already... anyway.

Lurien slowly got up and looked around. Her knees felt cold from the wet fabric covering them, her pigtails' ends - she didn't tie her hair up like that irl - tickled her bare shoulders, and the outfit she'd chosen way back when for how practical and comfortable it looked suddenly felt like the smartest decision Lurien had ever made in her life.

There was a bag at her side, and after rummaging in it Lurien confirmed that it did indeed hold her inventory. Annoyingly enough, she had not yet qualified for the Magic Bag quest; it sure would be convenient to have a magic bag in what was real life now...

Speaking about magic.

Lurien's class was Sorceress (well, technically Sorcerer, but) - the most straightforward one of the magic attack classes. Lurien liked it for its relative simplicity - although as levels climbed, simplicity was left a pipe dream. Oh well, versatility was nice too.

And of course, the big question now was whether all of it was worth anything now that the game was... kind of... reality?

Lurien focused and tried to remember her spell list. Visualized it the way she rememberered it looking, with the green borders and yellow accents of her customized interface...

...and there it was, sort of hanging in the air right in front of her face, providing the list of her skills the way she'd remembered organizing them.

Unsure of what this meant, Lurien reached out with her hand. She could almost-touch it - there was definitely some kind of feeling, but her hand could definitely pass straight through. It could be likened, she decided, to reaching through a stream of water. Except without the splashes. And the hand was not wet afterwards.

It was kind of weird.

After a little fiddling Lurien figured out a simple touchscreen-like interface. Just by flicking her fingers, she could send the list scrolling up or down, speed it up or slow it down, and of course select skills and view their descriptions.

Her fingers hovered over the 'cast' button. Most sorcerer spells were rather... destructive. And she was in a no-combat zone. She wasn't sure if this was going to be enforced now, or if it had extended to property damage in the game proper - she'd never quite had the reason to use combat skills in the city. But of course, right now the idea of leaving it before testing whether she could protect herself at all... didn't sound quite so fun. Or wise. Or any kind of positive thing at all, really.

In the end, Lurien managed to find a pretty innocuous-sounding defense barrier skill. Praise be to her Lore Gatherer subclass, allowing her to pick up random skills from other classes - it was useless most of the time, given she didn't choose what she would get, but when it shot, boy did it ever.

This skill was actually one of her favorite ones at lower levels, she remembered. She neglected it later, preferring to focus on mobility over protection... right now, the idea of it sounded very, very comforting.

Lurien touched the button.

She felt her mind focusing and her perception slightly shifting. Suddenly, she knew just how the spell interacted with the substance of the world; suddenly, she knew that this knowledge was what was represented by the Mana Points and that that's what would be expended by casting the spell.

"Blue Shield!" she said out loud and raised her hand, more subconsciously than by necessity directing with it where the barrier would manifest.

There was a shift in the air, and a blue diamond-shaped... thing, vaguely reminding her of what interface was like now, hung in front of her, just where she meant for it to.

Just in case, Lurien approached it and touched it. It was hard, unlike the interface, and pleasantly cool. Smooth, like stone. Lurien ran her hand over it. It wasn't big, it wasn't tied to personally her, and it couldn't take much magical damage, but it blocked physical attacks pretty decently, and most importantly, movement. It had a serious cooldown time, but could be cast pretty much instantly, and Lurien had used it to get out of sticky situations - the kind a sorceress playing solo was prone to getting into - many, many times. It felt pleasant and comforting and nice. Lurien tried to hug it; the edges were rounded, so her arms slid off it, but by getting on her tiptoes Lurien managed to sort of hook her hands over the edges of the diamond.

The other disadvantage of this shield was that it was, in the scale of MMO combat, not very big. In narrow dungeon corridors or in a labyrinth of debris it could be a game changer, but in open field it was pretty much useless. When Lurien was running with this skill, she had to pay a lot of attention to the terrain. She liked it - it made the world feel more real.

And now, the shield served as a connection to that feeling. She was a mage, a mid-level adventurer, and she knew what she was doing!

In theory, anyway.

With significant regret, Lurien unhooked her hands from around the shield - just in time, as it dissipated right under her fingers as she rocked back onto her heels. She felt much better already, but the reminder of the fact that combat was going to be an actual thing she was probably going to have to participate in personally now, and that from the safety of the screen she'd gotten her character (herself) killed so many times after a minor lapse in attention, almost served to counterbalance the surge in mood. Man, the idea of a ranged glass cannon sounded MUCH better when it was not promising to translate into actual real life pain...

The thought of death Lurien put off altogether for now. Most of her deaths happened because she'd failed to keep track of her HP properly in the excitement of battle and didn't run away when she really should have; it seemed like now, this kind of mistake was not going to be easy to make.

Remembering that point brought Lurien to the thought of the skills she regularly used for getaways, Winged Feet (greatly increasing her jump distance and height) and Disappear (made her invisible to everyone who couldn't already see her when she cast it, as long as she stayed perfectly motionless). That, of course, brought up the idea of control over her body, and that was actually quite a topic.

Lurien stomped her feet, waved her arms in the air, made a few experimental jumps and slipped on wet grass; fell over clumsily and just sprawled willingly on the grass, and finally let out a winning laugh.

This body was noticably shorter than her irl one, and had some other differences, and overall it felt... ridiculously more comfortable. Falling almost didn't hurt at all, and movements could be felt to the tiniest detail, and jumping didn't take all that much strength. The headache Lurien was trying to fight off by logging into her favorite MMO was gone, and her head wasn't actually spinning, and there wasn't any nausea even after the fall. And the grass and sticks and leaves and dirt under her hands and neck and head and shoulders were real, sticky and smooth and bumpy and textured, and it had been so long since she was last out of the large conglomerates of stone and asphalt and concrete and steel.

Lurien rolled around in the grass, laughing and laughing and getting her face wet and her pigtails whipped and her clothes dirty. The bag pressed into her side, and there was her wand, and she'd quickly found that her quick access panel was also right there in front of her if she just focused on it right; but also that she didn't really need it to cast things she'd already cast in this new world at least once - the feelings of knowledge and understanding, while mostly sacrificed for the actual casting, lingered still and could be called up again. And of course it took a lot more time than the official casting time listed in the skill description, but this was real life magic, magic Lurien could do with a thought and wave of hand, and if it was slightly inferior to what a game with objectively ridiculously overpowered characters had allowed, Lurien was still not going to be the one to complain.

As she tired herself out and calmed down a bit, she switched to exploring the menus. There were still all of them avaliable; there was even a log out button. Lurien touched it with trepidation - what if it worked? what if she would now leave this world and never get to come back again? - but of course it didn't do anything. There wasn't any logging out of this, whether reality or dream - Lurien was still willing to allow for that possiblity, but either way, all that was left was confront the new reality head on, which Lurien did by trying out the commands. They worked, even though dancing with a /dance command felt kind of awkward and forced - Lurien was new to this body but still felt she could do better on her own.

(Commands directing her avatar felt like large hands enveloped her and directed her movement - in a good way! and she could resist it if she wanted, and she could even cancel it partway, and overall SHE was the one in control of her body, the commands were just there to... help)

Finally, there was one last thing to check.

(Well, technically two, but Lurien decided to put off the second one for now, as it could occupy her for hours)

The Friend List.

It was, in fact, working. Lurien didn't have that many friends, but she wasn't opposed to the idea of adding literaly any stranger she so much as chatted with once, and so there was a pleasant sense of buzzing community as she scrolled through lit up and greyed out names signifying who was online and who wasn't.

Idly, Lurien wondered if players logging in after this... whatever it was... happened, would also come into this world. What did it look like from the perspective of people outside, anyway?... The question made her head hurt, and brought up some less than pleasant thoughts - the exact kind she was trying to escape from when logging in today - so Lurien waved the whole train of thought off. Instead she just scrolled through the list a couple of times up and down and failed to see a single light blinking on or off. It might not have meant anything in such a short period of time, but Lurien didn't feel up to prolonged testing right now.

Instead, she picked one of the profile connections that were currently online, and with trepidation clicked 'call'.

Telepathy, it was called in-universe. Out-of-universe, it was voice chat - or text chat. Lurien personally had always preferred the text chat option, as using her own voice left her feeling... vulnerable. Besides, things she typed into the chat she could actually reread and edit before sending, while spoken words lacked this kind of buffer. But oh well - using text chat NOW would be the height of weirdness. Besides, it didn't seem like it was even in the menu now...

"Lurien?!" a voice in her head exclaimed. It sounded a little like talking over the phone, only instead of having to hold it to her ear there were earbuds in - exactly like a voice chat, in other words.

Lurien fought off last bits of trepidation and opened her mouth.

"Hi, yes, Allura. It's me."

Her voice was lower than she'd expected for her character. It was pretty much the same as her real life voice, it just somehow felt different now. Some overtones were different - she was an elf in the game, and that must have added the little additional musicality and removed the rasp she'd long not been able to get rid of irl. 

Overall, she decided, she could like how she sounded now.

"Oh my god you sound totally different than I imagined!" excitedly flew from the other end of the connection, and Lurien winced. That was... part of why she didn't like the voice chat. Oh well. It would probably not have been wise to refrain from ever, ever talking out loud in this world now that she lived in it, and it was too late now anyway.

"I sound how I sound. You, on the other hand, sound exactly the same."

Lurien paused, considering what she'd actually wanted when calling Allura. To a certain degree it was just to make sure the mechanics still worked, and to hear her voice, and hearing her own knocked away the rest of her thoughts for a moment, but it was time to bring them back now.

"Right, uh, where are you?"

"In the Guild Hall!" - concern now rang out true in her friend's voice. "You come here, too! Where are you?"

"I'm on a hill near the tree", - Luriel reached out with her hand and caught a leaf fluttering in the wind, - "and there's no way I'm going indoors now, okay? It seems safe over here. You come over! Uh, I mean, I'm in Akihabara. In case that wasn't clear..."

Lurien bit her lip until she felt blood come out. This rambling was also part of why she avoided the voice chat.

"Ah, you're adorable in person!" meanwhile squealed the other girl. "So, okay, you like it here then?"

Lurien almost laughed out loud - there was a note of pride in Allura's voice that seemed to suggest she was partly responsible for what had happened.

Actually, for all Lurien knew, she could have been. That was one sobering thought.

"I guess I do, to a degree. Can we talk in person? I don't like talking over the phone... or voice chat. I mean, you know that I guess?" - and Lurien sharply cut herself off before going on another ramble.

"So I do", Allura confirmed. "Okay, I guess I know where you are. I'll be right there!"

 

***

Lurien did not see her friend's approach until she felt a hand gently tap her on her shoulder. She looked up - she was sitting on the grass, mesmerizedly watching the sunlight in the leaves - and there Allura was, right as she remembered her... no, not really. There was only so much face detail the engine could render on its lowest settings that Lurien used, but she was still pretty sure Allura's face used to look... slightly differently. It was more realistic now, and also more unique - she looked like a real person, and not Generic MMORPG Priestess # 21.

And she was smiling in the exact way her voice was always suggesting, beaming and eager and willing to be silly. And she pulled Lurien up and drew her into a hug, and it felt like pretty much the best thing to have happened as a result of this absurd situation. The downside of online friends: they can't hug you, no matter how much they want to, unless you manage to arrange to meet up IRL... Lurien never did, before.

Being the short one in a hug was a new sensation for her, too. She liked it, she decided, as she wrapped her arms around Allura herself and squeezed.

They stayed like that for a bit, noses tickled by each other's hair; then there was a sound of someone shouting breaking through the general hum of the crowd in the distance, and it served as a reminder of the existence of time as they reluctantly drew apart and stepped back.

"Oh man, Lurien, I can't believe I'm getting to see you in person... is that what you look like!"

There was admiration in Allura's voice, but that didn't stop Lurien from being seized by a bount of self consciousness. Praising her roleplayer's mojo, she dug into her bag for a mirror she knew was there.

Actually, she decided after taking it out and staring into it, the end result wasn't half bad. The face she had now looked like kind of a merge between what her game avatar looked and her IRL appearance. Her lips and nose were now wider than her avatar's used to be, her eyes were more slanted and eyebrows thicker, and her chin now jutted forward, but the face was still nicely rounded and the chin was small and eyes were far apart, and overall the result could fairly be described as, if not quite 'hot' or 'adorable', at least 'interesting'.

Allura laughed near her shoulder, looking over into the mirror too. "Well, what do you think of yourself now? Is that not what you look like in real life?"

Lurien sighed. She was not up to going into details now.

"Well, obviously, I don't look like this" - her hand touched her elf ears flaring to the sides - "in real life. And I'm shorter now, and I like my hair - " she paused, considering how much to say now, "- yeah, more or less this is how I look. I just didn't think of it immediately, is all. This is weird, and nice. I like it"

Allura giggled. "Well, you are in a minority then. Most people who didn't replicate their irl bodies precisely are now cursing up and down and offering their entire belongings and lifetime service for an appearance change potion, should anyone have any. I'm not with them, but I also look pretty much the exact same way" - she twirled around, her priestess kimono twirling around her legs - "with a few minor changes that can pretty much all be chalked up to idealization and resulting improvement. Anyway!" she stopped in front of Lurien, planting herself firmly into the ground, and grabbed her shoulders. "You need to join our guild now!"

"I need to?..." Lurien echoed, thoughts bubbling up in her head.

She'd never joined a guild before. It felt like a large undertaking, awkward and inconvenient and imposing responsibilities. She didn't come to an MMORPG to socialize MORE; that is to say, she did make friends, and they were the light of her life, but the guilds didn't exactly consist ONLY of people she knew. She'd teamed up with people in a party before - in fact, that's how she came to know Allura, and most of others on her friend list too - but guild just felt like too long term a commitment.

This was a game. It wasn't supposed to TAKE her energy, just give it back in relaxation and recharging.

This used to be a game.

"Sure, I guess", Lurien concluded. "If you'll have me?"

"Of course we will!" Allura tugged on her shoulder, already about to rush somewhere. "Come over, I'll introduce you to the guildmaster! They told us to bring in our solo friends, and I'd barely had time to even think where to start, and there you are!"

"Uh", Luriel allowed herself to be pulled along, "okay I guess? How big is your guild again?"

"There were about twenty people last I checked... and like half are online", - running didn't seem to interfere with Allura's chirping voice at all. - "It doesn't seem like anyone's coming online who wasn't when this started - Dio said he'd log in a couple of minutes after the midnight update, and he's nowhere to be seen, so we guess we are isolated and a dozen people it is..."

A midnight update! That was what Lurien had forgotten about. She was distracted and distraught logging in, and the thought of the new expansion everyone had been excited about, just... didn't come up either immediately, or after she discovered the new situation.

"The update, do you think that's what did that?" Lurien breathed out, noting to herself that she could also talk and run, and not be out of breath at all. Praise be to the adventurers' programmed lack of health issues.

"Maybe!" Allura flew up the stairs of the guild hall, threw open the door and dragged Lurien inside.

There were doors all around, something that had seemed like a simplified gaming convention when Lurien was last here, something that was utterly weird to see around you in person. Each door led to a separate large zone, Lurien knew, serving as more of a teleport than an actual door, spatial configuration wise. This corridor was just a congregation of them, not desiged to be anything but a gaming abstraction - but there was worn-out carpet on the floor, and decorations around the door frames, and absurdly bright torches providing light.

Allura threw open one of the doors - Lurien did not have time to note which one - and pulled her friend in.

The space Lurien now found herself in was something like a large living room. About half a dozen people, most of them strangers she'd never seen before, were sprawled on the sofa, sitting on the table, pacing from corner to corner, stoking the large fireplace - it felt busy, it felt occupied, and it felt like she was utterly out of place here.

The person who'd been near the fireplace straightened out and turned around to the sound of the door opening and closing. They were catfolk, white with black and red patches, one ear twitching nervously, dressed in what looked like a jester outfit. And they smiled with visible relief at Allura and Lurien coming in.

"Ah, there you are," - their voice was soft and somewhat cat-like in quality, though Lurien couldn't quite put her finger on what made it feel like that. "You are Lurien, right?"

She nodded, somewhat nervously.

"Good, good!" - the catfolk nodded along to their own words. They looked odd and were acting oddly and Lurien was already warming up to them. If this was the guildmaster...

"I am the guildmaster", they echoed her thoughts precisely. "My name is PatchedDestroyer666... Patches is just fine... and I welcome you into our humble guild, should you accept the invitation?"

Lurien nodded, smiling almost beside her will. She might just grow to like this place.

***

The guild was named "Fireplace", simply and oddly in the same way everything about it was odd. It didn't have a set purpose, it didn't have much of a budget, and Patches seemed quite lost at the idea of actually telling all these people what to do. They felt more like an inn master, apparently, hosting people in their space because they liked the company and liked providing warmth to others - but now everyone suddenly looked to them for instructions and solutions, and it turned out that in fact, being a guildmaster meant being a figure of authority and being responsible for your charges...

Patches stepped up to the challenge, and yes, their first order of business was to gather as many people as possible. Fireplacers seemed happier just from having each other around and having a place to gather, and Patches reasoned most of solo players would want a piece of that too - and strategy wise, there was safety in numbers.

They'd tried out some spells already, the guild zone having a dedicated training hall - it used to be mostly for roleplaying fluff purposes and showing off cool looking moves to other guild members, but now turned out to be useful for its named purpose. The melee fighters seemed to have their in-game abilities too, but the dissonance between memories of the mind and memories of the body proved pretty drastic, slowing them down about as much as Lurien was with the spells. All the abilities worked, and several people were awkwardly whacking each other with weaker attacks in the training hall while the local druid kept up their HP. Apparently the pain felt from the blows was proportionate to HP loss, just like Lurien suspected, and nobody quite had the guts to get to >50% to see what it would feel like to be there.

There were also no volunteers to go outside the city and look at what's there. There was curiosity, and quiet discomfort at the idea of not knowing, and there was also fear - the kind of fear Lurien felt herself at the beginning, before she cast her first spell.

Tanks whose tactics relied on letting their HP be whittled down really did not feel up to going into battle like that in person, and everyone else shivered at the thought of going into battle without tanks even when this was a game. Fireplacers were a loose association, but nobody here had gone without a party for quite a few levels; and yes, Lurien was the first and so far only 'friend' brought in from the outside.

"I'll go scout", she told Patches the inevitable conclusion.

Their fur stood on ends. "No! No, that's too dangerous, you - I should go!"

"You are needed here", stated Lurien the extremely obvious. Fireplacers started getting nervous when Patches so much as left the living room, them going outside was going to leave the guild, such as it was, in shambles.

Patches wasn't the only lvl 90 player in the guild, of course. There was also Dio, who had promised to log in later but apparently couldn't after midnight, and Luthien99 who was taking a break from the game, and Briar Rose who was in a different city - and the transport gates stopped working, because of course they did. Below them, there was a sharp drop in levels - Patches had recruited their guild from newbies, not veteran players, and Lurien with her lvl 41 soon-to-be-42 was actually up there at the top of the list.

"I'll go with you!" Allura chimed in, clenching her fists and almost having literal lightning flash in her eyes. "You'll need a healer, in case something happens! I'll come!"

(She hadn't appeared to have any intention of going out before Lurien's suggestion, but of course she couldn't leave a friend in need. Allura was precious, and there was a reason she was the first person Lurien contacted in an unfamiliar world)

"No", Lurien shook her head. "Look - what getaway skills do you have?"

"Uh," Allura bit her lip, "the home recall spell?"

"Uh huh. And its casting time is..?"

"But! But you're a sorcerer! What getaway skills do YOU have!" Allura bristled.

Lurien looked over at Patches, whose raised eyebrows indicated they had the same question.

"My subclass is Lore Gatherer", she reminded them. "I have some odd skills... I have plenty of odd skills, and I have Winged Feet and Disappear. We can go outside, and I'll show you - these skills are usable in town."

Patches nodded. "Please do."

Outside, they ended up having to go quite a ways from the Guild Hall to find a quiet nook to practice in. There were people in the streets, NPCs and adventurers alike, and they all looked alarmed to panicked to depressed, and Lurien knew exactly what the Fireplace guild was for - to avoid this.

By the way, when-this-was-a-game, NPCs did not seem to have the capacity to emote beyond pre-programmed scenarios, and Lurien was pretty sure some of the scenes she witnessed were anything but pre-programmed. She even saw some mom shoo her little children into a house; oh well, this one she'd investigate later.

Using Winged Feet felt amazing. Yes, she needed some training to not whack against things at top acceleration, but that only knocked the breath out of her and barely even registered as painful; and once she got the hang of it, it was almost as good as flying. Even without Winged Feet her jumps already felt like she was a panther or a tiger leaping on her prey, and with them - Lurien never wanted to go home again. There was nothing there that could be half as good as this, she was sure.

Disappear, meanwhile, was suddenly very, very hard. It was one thing to just take her hands off the controls when she was sitting at the computer screen; it was another to stay perfectly still right there. This body, apparently, was just as prone to randomly itching in weird places, and Lurien's bangs, cool-looking as they were, periodically needed brushing out of the eyes. Thankfully, unlike the game, moving only appeared to disrupt the spell if someone was actually looking at you at the moment, but... it was still pretty much too hard.

Oh well. Lurien spent several more minutes leaping on the roofs of Akihabara, getting the hang of using Winged Feet properly, and bid goodbye to her concerned friends.

(Yes, Patches was a friend already. They were just... that kind of person)

***

"Don't go anywhere dangerous", they said to her when parting. "Low level areas are already a risk, we don't know what might be going on out there now..."

"Yeah, I'm just going to whack some rats around", Lurien promised, and she intended to stick by that. The single-digit level zone was right outside the gate, behind a small NPC village.

It started with the outskirts of the villagers' fields, lvl 1 monsters being basically not even too huge rats. Normally there would be at least a couple of new players here - most of them would check out the game, get to level 5 or 6, and drift away onto something that suited their interests better, but they did provide a steady stream of protection for the village.

Right now, some of the rats were already digging up the fields; what was basically just stock animation in the game now was a very real destructive action. Lurien selected one of her favorite spells, Freeze Arrow - it was single target, and by sorcerer standards it didn't do much damage, but it also slowed down the enemy's movements, and had a short cooldown - and blasted a rat.

Just as expected from the encounter of a lvl 40 character and a lvl 1 monster, the rat dropped instantly. It fell over, and its body dissolved into bubbles flying to the sky, the same way it used to look in the game; man it looked weird in person.

Other rats paid no attention to this encounter; of course, nobody wanted clumsy lvl 1 players to get killed by monsters they accidentally aggro'd by trying to figure out the controls. The fact that this mechanic was still in action was kind of encouraging.

Lurien cast Freeze Arrow again and again, getting more and more of a feel for it and getting closer and closer to its actual listed casting time. It wasn't one of her best attacks, DPS-wise, but its slow down effect always made her feel more secure, and right now, security in fights was kind of her priority. Sure, she did not get any XP from massacring lvl 1 monsters, but right now it was actual _experience_ that she was looking for, not its numbers equivalent.

If she squinted just so, she could see the rats' status screens, looking just like in the game. It took focus, though, and she couldn't cast a spell and look at the HP at the same time. Hopefully, it would come with time; right now, Lurien settled for getting more of a feel for how this felt and looked without the status screens. She tried out several other spells; even the weakest ones dropped the rats in one hit, so there wasn't much to compare there, but she was getting used to that. Her capacity to remember multiple spells without having to select them in the menu seemed to be limited to the size of her quick access panel, which was fair enough - and the quick access panel actually reflected which spells she had memorized. After a little tweaking, Lurien settled on a set number, and after a while, having securely cleaned out the fields, moved on to higher level areas.

For a while, she cut through them like a hot knife through butter; then her attack suddenly did not one-shot the ugly dog-like thing she was aiming at, and instead it turned around and lunged at her.

Lurien flinched back, stumbled and fell on her ass. The dog was already above her, its teeth aiming for her jugular -

\- and she could barely feel it when it connected. She'd felt more pain when scratching her neck, sometimes.

Status screen confirmed that her HP was literally regenerating faster than the dog's repeated attacks - Lurien awkwardly held it off with the staff she'd borrowed in the guild, so it settled for her arms instead of neck - could bring it down. This encounter was still safe, if harrowing psychologically.

Well, that was the experience she was looking for. Lurien stood up, ignoring the dog's attempts to knock her over again - jeez, with the difference in their physical strength enforced by the game's numbers it might as well have been a kitten - and simply whacked it with a staff.

That was enough to bring down the remainder of its HP, and the dog burst out into bubbles. This was the closest Lurien'd seen that so far; she tried to poke one, but it evaded her touch and flew off into the sky.

The next dog, Lurien was more ready for. It was still terrifying to see it lunge, but all it took to stop that was a calculated smack with a staff. Lurien was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to aim a long stick like that in real life, but in here some basic reflexes were built into the body on a level that didn't even call up any dissonance. She wanted to do it, and she did it, it was that simple.

Then Lurien tried a stronger spell. The next dog dropped like an autumn leaf.

She switched back to Freeze Arrow. This one slowed down the dogs enough that even from the short distance Lurien had been choosing - just a dozen meters or so - she'd managed to land two hits with the spell, which was of course enough to bring the dogs down. She was a mage, after all, not physical fighter... although some ability to handle the staff was neat, too.

With that thought, Lurien backtracked a bit and started practicing with the staff on weaker monsters. Her strength - a sorceress! not a defender! - was nothing to write home about, so it actually took multiple whacks to bring down even those weak critters, but aformentioned whacks also kept them away from gnawing at her shins, which... seemed the extent of what they could do with this level difference.

Eventually, evening fell, and Lurien felt her stomach growl. There was some food in her bag, she remembered - some ingredient plants and most definitely at least one sandwich. Good thing the game had no spoiling mechanics!

...it might have some now.  
She probably wanted to hurry.

***

One meal later... well, that could have gone better.

Lurien jumped off the tree which had taken her several pretty pathetic attempts to get into, and headed into the village.

There were several people fixing the fields where the rats had broken past the fence before. Lurien, feeling confident, picked a nice area power and nuked the rats already starting to gather nearby again. Some of the heads turned towards her, but nobody initiated conversation.

Lurien bit her lip, watching them work. This was definitely not a script present in the game - she'd paid way too much attention to the slightest scraps of realism in the NPCs, wishing so badly this world were a tiny bit more real... Well. She got her wish. Time to find out to what extent.

She spotted a middle-aged woman watching them from one of the houses from afar. They locked eyes; the woman smiled.

Taking that as encouragement, Lurien hurried to her.

"Hello", she said somewhat awkwardly, stopping close to her but not so close as to be a threat (oh god she was totally overthinking this). "Uh... could I buy some food?"

The woman's equally anxious face lit up with a smile.

"Of course. Come on in!"

The inside of the house looked pretty much exactly like what Lurien had imagined it should be like - except before, it wasn't accessible to players. It had just been a solid object polygon with some textures slapped on it, realism falling apart if you so much as came close, much less tried to look into the windows. And now, it was real, and it was a neat little rural home, with herbs hanging on the walls and creaking wooden furniture.

"My name is Lurien", the girl said to the woman's back as she was reaching into a cupboard.

The back stiffened, then relaxed slowly, and the woman turned around.

"I'm Vasilisa... so the adventurers have names, too, huh?"

"Yeah, we do... uh... what did it look like to you, before?"

Vasilisa shrugged, reaching into the cupboard again.

"Well, we could obviously see your status screens, but... No adventurer has ever really talked to us before. What happened today? Something happened, didn't it?"

"It did," Lurien agreed. Sometime when she was not paying attention her body's autopilot directed her to sit on the edge of the table, and she supposed that was her life now. She shuffled further onto it and swung her legs forward and backward, considering how to explain things.

"We are... not local. We didn't actually live here. We just kind of, visited. To, you know, do... adventurer stuff."

The explanation was notably less coherent than Lurien would have hoped for, but she persevered.

"And now we can't go home anymore. And other stuff has changed, too, like - we didn't not talk to you because we didn't want to, uh - we just couldn't! It's like, you wouldn't reply when we tried or something. Not really reply, not like we can talk now. Uh, I know I tried and, uh... does any of this make any sense?"

Lurien looked at Vasilisa who didn't seem in the least perturbed by setting down some more food near her butt, and now sat down on a chair near the table herself.

"It does, yes..." she thoughtfully touched her lips. "So that's why you would... never mind that. But I suppose, there are no new adventurers coming in, either?"

"Seems like that", Lurien nodded. "And even those who were new... well, things have changed. We haven't really - fights weren't like this. We pretty much - well, we weren't really here. We just directed these bodies like puppets, and... well, we don't know what happens if we... die now." She shrugged awkwardly, as if trying to dismiss the heavy topic. Really, this was a very good question, and she almost felt bad for being just... happy that this happened. Elated, even if it meant her life would be more dangerous now. She liked being here. She liked this.

"Oh, so that's why..." Vasilisa bit her lip. "And you won't come ask if you can do anything for us anymore, will you?"

"I don't know, I... I suppose everyone will be too busy for that."

Lurien swung her legs again.

"We just... don't know what to do now. And this world doesn't look like it used to, to us."

"But you still came", Vasilisa noted. "You, Lurien, came and cleared our fields, didn't you?"

She was looking right in Lurien's eyes now, and it made the girl vaguely uncomfortable, because she wasn't sure how to respond. Text communication was preferable, really... but there was still some of the joy of what she was now propping up her mood and confidence, and so she looked at Vasilisa's face, too.

"I wanted some training, is all. Some safe training, just to figure out how it works now... Do you want me to come again tomorrow?"

"Yes, yes, please, I - the food is free, by the way..." she gestured towards the food on the table, which was actually already put in a basket and covered with a cloth. When that happened, Lurien had no idea.

"Is it now," Lurien lifted the cloth and peered inside. There appeared to be bread, some vegetables carefully packaged separately, a jug of milk and a packet of what she suspected was salt. It did not look like something that should have been free, and the woman's house did not look particularly rich.

"What would this cost if I had bought it at the stands?"

Vasilisa blinked.

"Uh... about ten gold I guess?..."

"Nice."

Lurien reached into the purse which was of course at her belt. She also had the option of transferring money directly through the menu, she had seen the interface for that, but touching the smooth, cold coins with the thin relief on them just felt nice.

She counted out five.

"There. Half price," - she put the coins on the table, grabbed the basket, hopped down to the floor and smiled at Vasilisa.

"Thank you!"

Only as Lurien was already leaving the village for the city gate did she realize that maybe she didn't quite think this plan through. For all that her food experiments revealed horrible taste of anything that wasn't an ingredient, and the black sludge if she tried to make so much as a sandwich by hand, in the end she was feeling pretty full. And in the guild there was a dozen people, and this food was definitely not enough for them all... whether it was going to be actually tasty or as disgusting as what Lurien had already tasted.

Oh well, the rest of the guild could just get their own food, and she'd just treat Allura. And Patches, maybe. There was a clue in her head that maybe explicitly palling up with the guildmaster was not quite the best social strategy if she wanted to fit in, but then again, she didn't know those people, and Patches was a great person. If that made her a 'pet', whatever. Wouldn't that be a new sensation!

As she moved along the city streets - she tried and failed to resist the temptation to cast Winged Feet and take to the rooftops - she noted that the panic had already subsided. There were very few people in the streets - exceptionally few, in fact, compared to the general busy buzz of a city where even in the ungodliest hours there would be people staying up and people from different timezones (and the reason Lurien knew this was totally not because she'd often stayed up till dawn herself, no, not at all).

The empty city was eerie. Before, it felt pretty much the same as when-it-was-a-game, even if the players were doing slightly different things - it still felt kind of like Lurien simply got a more immersive experience of playing her character. Yes, she got scared at first, but soon got distracted by all the possibilities and sensory experiences, and then more or less forcibly shut down all disturbing thoughts.

Now though, the city of Akihabara looked differently than it ever had before. And sounded, and smelled - there were no cars here, no asphalt, and also - so far - no cigarettes. Lurien was looking forward to the prospect of living in a reality without cigarette smoke, but the idea of never getting to go to the world with them gave her chills.

It wasn't the idea of parting with her family or friends that gave her pause most. Honestly, her old life was nothing much to mourn, and the fond memories she had were actually much better as memories, with no chance of ever reminding her of the unpleasant parts.

(And yes, she was probably going to miss everyone anyway, but so she would if she'd simply moved away from home, and she was very much planning on doing that as soon as she could.)

The part that was terrifying was simply how alien all of this was. It truly was postapocalypse - except instead of an apocalypse, an understandable, big, scary event where you had the time to come to terms with losing the old ways and ended up just being happy to survive, there had just been a moment of disorientation, and sunlight in the fallen leaves, and wet grass, and the weight of the bag, and a new face to go with a new body.

This was going to be her life now. For how long, she didn't think, albeit the assumption she was going to work off was 'forever' - but that wasn't the point, really, just 'now' was daunting enough for now. Yes, she'd been feeling like she adapted easily, but can you really take one day out of a person's life and judge how well-adjusted they are by it alone?

She knew nothing about this new world, this world that wasn't Elder Tale after all. She didn't know where everyone was now, she didn't know what it all looked like from the perspective of the People of the Land - well, she knew the perspective of one of them, but she felt it probably wasn't entirely representative.

She didn't even know how her new guild was adapting - was there even still a guild? She left several hours ago, and they'd agreed that nobody would bother her by telepathy lest they distract her at an inopportune moment and... well. They still didn't know what death was in this world, after all.

Maybe calling before knocking on the door was the good idea here.

Lurien stopped halfway to the Guild Hall, crouching on top of a half-destroyed skyscraper, and called up the Friend List.

Allura answered almost immediately.

"Hey!" she chirped as cheerfully as ever, and Lurien had no idea if this meant anything. "We were starting to get worried! I mean, you're online and stuff, but - well, how's it been?"

"I'll tell you in person," Lurien offered. She still didn't like telepathy, just like she didn't like phones, convenient as they both were. "I'm alright and I'm back in Akihabara; how's the guild?"

"Oh!" Allura's voice perked up. "We've got more new people! Kind of like you, only lower level? Nobody except Patches, me and Shame has left the guild at all since they came in, can you imagine?!"

"Wait, wait, wait," Lurien interjected, feeling like she was drowning in new information. It seemed like everything was alright, that was good, but the details were a bit too much at the same time. "Shame? That's a name?"

"So it is!" Allura confirmed cheerfully. "Her full nickname is actually Shame On You. Wait till you meet her in person, I bet you'll like her. Just come home already! We're waiting!"

Come home.

That was nice to hear.

Lurien shrugged. Existential fear at this new life had not entirely dissipated yet, but at least for the moment, it felt like it was worth it.

***

The guild was noisy and full of life and surprisingly cheerful. Still, Lurien was grateful when instead of immediately introducing her to everyone Allura dragged her into the guildmaster's room instead.

Patches was sitting at an impressive-looking writing desk with their head in their paws and looking utterly exhausted. They managed a weak smile in Lurien's direction, then got up, wandered over to the dark leather couch and flopped there, dead kitty style.

"Report," Allura mumbled, poking Lurien in the shoulder.

"Uh?" - to her, Patches didn't look like they were ready to receive a report, or really anything but a cup of hot tea and some headache meds.

Those didn't exist in this world as far as she knew, but perhaps something else did.

"So I bought some food from locals," she put the basket on the desk and took out first of all the jar of milk. She didn't know if it tasted like it was supposed to, but if the smell was anything to go by...

Patches' whiskers twitched.

They slid off the sofa to the floor, in a very non-bipedal manner transported themselves towards the chair and kinda slithered up it in the direction of the cup of milk that Lurien was just finishing pouring.

Thankfully, the drinking itself seemed to be going along the human scheme, not the cat scheme. It still was kind of unsettling - the game didn't have nearly enough detail in animations, and Lurien never cared for anthropomorphic animals enough to actually think what their faces would look like in detail close up. Now she knew - and honestly, humans eating and drinking was a weird enough thing to watch. She didn't need also catfolk to go with that.

She wandered off to the sofa herself, climbed on the back - what, it was comfortable! - and perched there, watching Allura and Patches plunder the basket.

"I bought it for half price," she informed them once they slowed down enough to start casting glances in her direction. "I'd cleared the low level area near the village, so the woman actually wanted to give it to me for free, but I - okay, I should probably start from the beginning..."

She gathered her thoughts, which was harder than it should have been. Yes, her body wasn't tired and was basically superhuman, but the mental fatigue was catching up, and some of the walls she'd built between her conscious mind and stuff she didn't want to think about were starting to creak ominously.

"Okay, so combat. The level difference is exactly what it used to be. That dog that tried to maul me didn't even manage to scratch me, scary as it was," she paused and glanced up at her listeners, whose faces were not displaying the proper amount of fear corresponding to the fact she'd gotten attacked by a monster who tried to bite out her throat. Well, that was good enough for now, it's not like she was _trying_ to make them worry. "Quick access panel is about how much I can keep in mind how to do automatically, so that works how it should, too. There don't seem to be any new players coming in, and the NPCs - at least the one I talked to - would very much like someone to take care of the pests..."

This was probably not remotely as coherent as she'd wished it to be, but it was still more than she thought she'd manage. Fatigue was already translating to vertigo, and she slid down to the actual seat of the couch.

"I'm assuming there's no quest reward in it for now?" Patches meanwhile inquired, seated at their table again.

"Not as far as I can tell, but the monsters still drop money. It... makes as much sense as it sounds like. Not much money, but you know, any port in a storm... I mean, the food isn't that expensive... uh..." Lurien pressed both her palms on her eyes. She was VERY tired. Good thing this caught up with her now and not back on the rooftops...

"Over here", Allura's voice brought her back to reality and it looked like a couple of minutes just dropped out because now there were blankets and pillows between the back of the sofa and the bookcase at the wall. "Patches will take the sofa, because it's their room after all - no, Patches, this is _not_ negotiable, - and the two of us will sleep down here, okay? I've got Shame and Kitten - you'll meet them tomorrow - organizing everyone else's sleep, so just drop down."

"Mm", Lurien agreed and did just that - falling short distances still didn't hurt any noticable amount, and climbing over the back of the sofa felt easier than getting up and walking around. There were blankets, multiple, soft and heavy, and smelling like wood and feathers and fabric. She rolled herself up in one like a burrito, then glanced at Allura through half-opened eyes.

"Where from?..."

This wasn't particularly coherent, but Allura seemed to understand anyway.

"The wardrobe", - she nodded over to the far wall. "It used to just be a decorative item, but now it's got linens and blankets and pillows and some clothes, too. We'll have to think about laundry... " she kept on going, and Lurien got the distinct impression that this was something she would be interested in, but her head was already too heavy and sounds were muffled and eyes were sticking together like there was glue in them. She drifted off, her back pressed against the sofa, her pigtails scuffed enough to barely be noticable against her head, shoes already kicked off.

It was nice.

***

It was nice, but was it real?

Lurien wasn't sure at what moment she was awake, but now it was dark and she could hear the sounds of Allura and Patches breathing and the wooden walls creaking, and it was nothing at all like the reality she knew, and could this be reality? Or was this just a hallucination, an illusion for her personally? Did she get here in some entirely different way than she remembered, could the entire yesterday have been a dream? It's not like it connected to anything else, and it was exactly the kind of thing her subconscious would have come up with.

She twitched her arms, kicked the blanket burrito apart. Banged her elbow against the sofa's hard back but it barely even _hurt,_ the exact way a dream would. She groped her head, found the pigtails, _tugged_ the pigtails, her long, long hair, but it still didn't hurt as much as pulling her hair should, and she didn't feel headache, or aching joints, or anything at all that should have been hurting, reminding and proving to her that she was alive and real. For all her sensations told her right now she could have been a long dead ghost with memories confused from entirely different times.

The blankets, she reminded herself, trying to calm her all-too-fast breathing. She could feel her heart beating in her chest, too, except this could be something she was just imagining, how could her body be real? This body was not hers at all, but when she moved the blankets they moved and _there were other people here._

Lurien wasn't even sure she felt her own movements when she clampered over to Allura and pushed her. She moved a little, mumbled something in her sleep; Lurien shook her, seized by panic too strongly to mind her manners right now. The new, _not-real_ strength her body now had actually smacked Allura against the floor and the bookcase several times, before she woke up enough to catch Lurien's hand and hold it while sitting up.

"Lurien?..." her sleepy voice sounded like the best music in the world, because _she knew Lurien's name_ , she _expected_ her to be there, her words meant that Lurien was _supposed_ to be there, and there was no way the reality she was providing was less solid than the one tricks of Lurien's mind were insisting on.

Lurien whimpered, and the sound of it, the idea of making sounds right now, terrified her enough that she immediately went silent and, helpless to even think about using her voice right now, just pressed against her friend, climbed into her lap and curled up against her as tight as she could.

"Lurien?..." Allura's voice was still sleepy, but now also wary and worried. Through tightly shut eyelids Lurien still felt a spark of light - Allura probably did that with one of her spells or lit a candle or something. She felt Allura's body moved as she presumably looked around, then both her arms embraced Lurien, and she tightened the hug until Lurien felt she could relax her own body a little.

"It's safe, it's okay, it's fine", Allura whispered into her ear and rocked gently side to side, until Lurien felt well enough to be embarrassed by this position.

She awkwardly half-crawled half-fell off her friend's knees and sat upright in front of her in the middle of the blanket nest. There was a magical light floating next to them, bathing the room in gently subdued yellow-red brilliance, and Allura's face was kind and open and worried, and the reality of this little corner was solid enough that Lurien felt she could think, and base her thinking on what it implied about her memories and what she knew was true.

"I'm sorry", was of course the first thing out of her mouth, and she drew her knees together and half-hid her face behind them. "I'm just... not feeling good. Please tell me..." she stumbled. She wasn't sure what she could ask for right now. _Please tell me I'm real_ did not exactly sound like the sanest option, but on the other hand, could she really pretend to be sane right now?

"Please tell me I'm real", she whispered, and somehow in the glow of magic light it sounded less stupid out loud than in her head.

Allura moved and in a moment was next to her, and then was lightly hugging her, and the reality of their bodies touching, of having to move her arms and position her legs in a way that would be less uncomfortable for them both _helped_ , it kept helping, and then Allura was whispering in her ear that of course she was real, and how could she doubt that, and that she was a friend, a good friend - this was actually a surprise to hear - that she was nice and kind and brave and Allura really liked adventuring with her and that she helped the guild today and helped the NPCs too, and the narrative her voice was weaving helped Lurien put together her memories, too.

Unsurprisingly in retrospect, it turned out everything fit together exactly as Lurien remembered it. Even in the face of absolute unbelievability, her memory actually held up and presented correct information, and now she felt kind of stupid for ever doubting it. She woke up her friend in the middle of the night for what, comparing notes? There were things to do in the morning, guild chores to run, hypotheses about this new world to check out, and they both needed sleep.

"I'm sorry", Lurien finally mumbled as she gently freed herself from Allura's arms. Allura drew back, shifted over to her blanket, leaned against the bookcase and tilted her head a bit to the side, looking at Lurien in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable.

(Uncomfortable in a way that was both pleasantly real, and actually somewhat unpleasantly real. _That_ was the kind of look she was used to)

"I'm sorry", she repeated numbly and drew back herself until she felt the sofa against her back, curled up guiltily, happy about the new smallness of her body, because she could feel like she could disappear now... not literally, the spell required that nobody be looking at her, and Allura. Was. Looking.

"Sorry for what?" she said softly, and Lurien flinched, not sure what to reply.

"For... waking you up?" she ventured, trying to guess the correct answer. For being weird? For hugging her without permission? This was Allura, she hugged everyone always, surely hugging her first wasn't that bad a misstep?

"You were not okay. You ARE not okay", Allura said softly, softer than Lurien expected, and this was like missing a step in the stairs - you are expecting to smack against something, but instead you keep going and keep flying and lose your balance and _what to do now?_

Lurien curled up tighter and hoped this would be over quickly.

"Lurien?" Allura's voice insistently pulled her out of her comfortable little ball. "Lurien, can you answer me? Can you talk? Can you say anything other than "I'm sorry"?"

"I'm sorry", Lurien mumbled automatically, then hiccupped hysterically at how non-answering that was. But she couldn't think of anything else to say, but she had to at least try?... It's not like she COULDN'T talk. She could. She just had to make herself try. She also had to be quiet to not wake up Patches, but that was doable.

"I can talk", she finally pieced together. "I'm sorry, I just..." she lost the words again here. Just what? Just didn't trust her mind? Just needed to rely on other people to so much as _exist_? Just had no idea how to talk to anyone, even her best friend right now?

Allura closer, and Lurien froze for a moment, but then Allura was hugging her again, and that brought all her defenses down, and then she was crying, sobbing as quietly as she could, wiping tears and snot off her face with a sleeve because it was less of a problem to wash her own clothes than to make other things dirty, and she couldn't not be crying now, there was something about the way Allura was holding her that demanded tears and release and sniffling and then Allura fished a handkerchief from somewhere and everything was fine and better and Lurien kept crying until she was all out.

She thought about saying "I'm sorry" again, but something about that felt tonally jarring, so she didn't. She just waited in suddenly comfortable silence for Allura to say something.

She still had no idea what could be going on in her friend's head about any of this, but she felt safe and calm and serene and like not moving at all. It was nice.

"Are you okay?" Allura's soft voice almost blended with the creaking silence of the room.

"Uh huh", Lurien hiccupped for the last time, but really, this was the aftermath already. The worst was over, whatever it was.

"Do you, uh... do you want to sleep under the same blanket?" Allura offered somewhat hesitantly. Lurien noted the hesitation, but in her current state was too exhausted to really keep it in mind. She could feel bad about it later, right now she's had enough of that.

"Yes", she whispered and pressed tighter against her friend and the sofa.

"Alright", Allura whispered back, and then after a couple of minutes of silent activity the blanket nest was fused together, and Lurien was falling asleep again, her eyes still/again wet with tears, her friend's weight against her back, her hands and knees pressing against the sofa. Everything was real, the world was real, and it was okay, and she was going to be okay. Fine.

This time, she fell asleep for real.


End file.
